A little frustrated... I need to vent...is this normal???

[Nick B]

I've been trying to reach the CPO team at Tesla for a week and a half. Spoke with multiple representatives on the toll free phone line (the one they tell you to call when you're interested in getting pictures of a specific car).

Each time, they put me on hold and then try to reach out to the team which, by the way, is either way understaffed or highly inefficient.

They escalated my call 2 days ago to the "East coast VP" if such a person does exist and told me I should get a call back in 1 or 2 hours. Well guess what? Still no call back 2 days after...

Now obviously the car I wanted to purchase is no longer for sale. I did not want to put a 2500$ deposit on it without having basic information: pictures, general state of the car and I also wanted to know if they still do accommodation sales (to save taxes on my existing vehicule). No one can provide me with that basic information it seems... even at the service center they told me that they cannot see, with the VIN number, where the car is located.

Seems to me like they do not want to do business! After all, I'm only spending 80+ grand on a car...

Any ideas to reach them instead of constantly calling the phone line? I know no other business that is so unorganized.

*Sigh*

 

[CpoHunter]

There are plenty of people out there who will plunk down the money site unseen. So why should they bother taking the time to respond to requests for pictures?

 

[ewoodrick]

Elon has indicated that Customer service is an issue and that they are starting to work to fix it.

Th car may have been bought by someone local who didn't need to see pictures

 

[PhilDavid]

There are plenty of people out there who will plunk down the money site unseen. So why should they bother taking the time to respond to requests for pictures?

Yeah why treat customers well and sell a quality product if you can mistreat them instead? Seems to be the motto of the CPO program.

 

[Uncle Paul]

I see this same thing when ever I put a car up for sale on the internet.

I get deluged with "buyers" that want to drill into every single detail of the item. Want tons of pictures, independant inspections, paint thickness measurements, measurements of tread on each tire, including spare. Documentation for every service, details of every repair of accident. Need to know how it was driven, how it was stored, what kind of driver, how much of the mileage was freeway. Is it ever in rain, smoked in, had pets onboard, did anyone die in the car...the lists are essentially endless. After providing all this information the prospective buyer simply fades away.

The car is usually sold to someone looking for that exact car, or a car at that price. All the tire kickers often never get to the point of sending a deposit.

Elon says that Tesla is growing at a super rapid rate, and is having a hard time finding enough good people to fill all their openings. They have made customer service a top priority, and realize that they do not currently have enough good trained people to handle all the requests for communication. They have so many top priorities such as Supercharger rollouts, production increases, product developments etc, that they are often backed up with all the people to people demands.

Tesla is selling about 30,000 new vehicles every month. Not sure how many used vehicles they are also delivering. They need to deal with all the solid people placing orders and getting deliveries before working on the tire kickers.

 

[PhilDavid]

I see this same thing when ever I put a car up for sale on the internet.

I get deluged with "buyers" that want to drill into every single detail of the item. Want tons of pictures, independant inspections, paint thickness measurements, measurements of tread on each tire, including spare. Documentation for every service, details of every repair of accident. Need to know how it was driven, how it was stored, what kind of driver, how much of the mileage was freeway. Is it ever in rain, smoked in, had pets onboard, did anyone die in the car...the lists are essentially endless. After providing all this information the prospective buyer simply fades away.

The car is usually sold to someone looking for that exact car, or a car at that price. All the tire kickers often never get to the point of sending a deposit.

Elon says that Tesla is growing at a super rapid rate, and is having a hard time finding enough good people to fill all their openings. They have made customer service a top priority, and realize that they do not currently have enough good trained people to handle all the requests for communication. They have so many top priorities such as Supercharger rollouts, production increases, product developments etc, that they are often backed up with all the people to people demands.

Tesla is selling about 30,000 new vehicles every month. Not sure how many used vehicles they are also delivering. They need to deal with all the solid people placing orders and getting deliveries before working on the tire kickers.

You do realize that every other car dealer could use the same logic you have presented here and sell cars all beaten up that look like they came from a junk yard -- right?

Somehow car dealers have reached the conclusion it is beneath them to sell cars in such embarrassing condition and they want to provide a better customer experience.

Rather than make excuses for the horrible treatment of customers with a poor CPO program, let's hope Tesla will develop some standards and start treating their customers who buy CPO cars at least as well as a Hyundai dealer.

 

[Gero3]

I see this same thing when ever I put a car up for sale on the internet.

I get deluged with "buyers" that want to drill into every single detail of the item. Want tons of pictures, independant inspections, paint thickness measurements, measurements of tread on each tire, including spare. Documentation for every service, details of every repair of accident. Need to know how it was driven, how it was stored, what kind of driver, how much of the mileage was freeway. Is it ever in rain, smoked in, had pets onboard, did anyone die in the car...the lists are essentially endless. After providing all this information the prospective buyer simply fades away.

The car is usually sold to someone looking for that exact car, or a car at that price. All the tire kickers often never get to the point of sending a deposit.

Elon says that Tesla is growing at a super rapid rate, and is having a hard time finding enough good people to fill all their openings. They have made customer service a top priority, and realize that they do not currently have enough good trained people to handle all the requests for communication. They have so many top priorities such as Supercharger rollouts, production increases, product developments etc, that they are often backed up with all the people to people demands.

Tesla is selling about 30,000 new vehicles every month. Not sure how many used vehicles they are also delivering. They need to deal with all the solid people placing orders and getting deliveries before working on the tire kickers.

The advantage other dealers have is they own their business and can clean up the car themselves or send it in for repairs and their particular dealership has to take on the responsibility. With Tesla there is no middle man, they are directly in control, so they are also to blame. this problem will only get worse when more cars are being returned from lease.

Customer service should not be compromised, they can make a killing from used CPO cars as there are tons of ppl who would love to own a CPO Tesla. But if they can't see or test drive the car and then read stories like this, they might not pull the trigger.

No excuse for bad customer service.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

There are plenty of people out there who will plunk down the money site unseen. So why should they bother taking the time to respond to requests for pictures?

You mean scam victims?

I'm not trying to victim blame, but that is the behavior that will get a person scammed.

The biggest beef with the CPO program is they took away refurbishing cars (at least last time I checked). So when someone orders a CPO they might not get what they expected. It's very much a "your mileage might very" kinda thing.

 

[TennisRat]

I've been trying to reach the CPO team at Tesla for a week and a half. Spoke with multiple representatives on the toll free phone line (the one they tell you to call when you're interested in getting pictures of a specific car).

Each time, they put me on hold and then try to reach out to the team which, by the way, is either way understaffed or highly inefficient.

They escalated my call 2 days ago to the "East coast VP" if such a person does exist and told me I should get a call back in 1 or 2 hours. Well guess what? Still no call back 2 days after...

Now obviously the car I wanted to purchase is no longer for sale. I did not want to put a 2500$ deposit on it without having basic information: pictures, general state of the car and I also wanted to know if they still do accommodation sales (to save taxes on my existing vehicule). No one can provide me with that basic information it seems... even at the service center they told me that they cannot see, with the VIN number, where the car is located.

Seems to me like they do not want to do business! After all, I'm only spending 80+ grand on a car...

Any ideas to reach them instead of constantly calling the phone line? I know no other business that is so unorganized.

*Sigh*

Today I received home delivery of my '18 Model S. I paid 98K for,"loaner,"out of the Austin center - saved about12k (loaded). To my total disgust, the car was filthy and I received only one key fob! My delivery coordinator is trying to get to the bottom of this mess .As of this posting, not a word about my second key fob. In all my years of owning luxury cars I've never experienced such crappy buying experience. Any advice from experienced S owners re: any recourse I might have?

 

[xyeahtony]

Today I received home delivery of my '18 Model S. I paid 98K for,"loaner,"out of the Austin center - saved about12k (loaded). To my total disgust, the car was filthy and I received only one key fob! My delivery coordinator is trying to get to the bottom of this mess .As of this posting, not a word about my second key fob. In all my years of owning luxury cars I've never experienced such crappy buying experience. Any advice from experienced S owners re: any recourse I might have?

Clean the car, and enjoy it.

 

[jboles]

Today I received home delivery of my '18 Model S. I paid 98K for,"loaner,"out of the Austin center - saved about12k (loaded). To my total disgust, the car was filthy and I received only one key fob! My delivery coordinator is trying to get to the bottom of this mess .As of this posting, not a word about my second key fob. In all my years of owning luxury cars I've never experienced such crappy buying experience. Any advice from experienced S owners re: any recourse I might have?

Although mine was a CPO/Used Model S, my experience is similar to yours. Only one key fob and the car was filthy when it was delivered to our home. I am getting really irritated with many of the Tesla employees that ruin customer experience. It's bad enough that Tesla is under heavy scrutiny from the media/shorts spreading constant FUD. Call Tesla and have them re-program a new fob mine only took about 30mins.

Also, tell them you want to speak to a supervisor regarding the poor condition of the vehicle. They offered to pay for a wash/detail, but I said it's no big deal so they just gave me a complete set of the Tesla all weather mats for the trouble. But I am pretty sure that once you get this sorted out, you will definitely enjoy the car!

 

[Nick B]

Elon has indicated that Customer service is an issue and that they are starting to work to fix it.

Th car may have been bought by someone local who didn't need to see pictures

Maybe but even I went to the local SC to see a used car that was in Montreal and what happens is that they don't even gave them on site. They park the cars in other areas of the town, sometimes 25 mins away and there are multiple parking area so even the SC doesn't know where the cars are!

 

[Nick B]

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'm not a picky buyer but the problem lies with the fact that *most of the time* you cannot get pictures of the cars nor a simple report. Initially this was not a problem because tesla actually refurbished their cars to a certain standard so you would have ease of mind.

But nowadays they sell the cars as is will not even repairing important scratches nor documenting them so you're pretty much buying something that's worth 75 000$ and more and you might end up with a dump. Worst is, the 2500$ deposit is non refundable and they will not arrange at the buyers cost a transportation option if you wish to buy from another SC.

Let's see here I'll make a deposit on this one... and then this one.. etc.

Finally, they also have the upper hand on your trade in quote as it is only valid for 2 weeks. Better make sure they deliver the car fast as after they could technically change the value of your car! I really don't like the lack of flexibility of Tesla.

 

[Nick B]

I'll just finish with an idea for Tesla: hoe about you make the pictures and report available to all of the Tesla employees?

There's no customer information in there and they could easily share the information with a potential buyer like me. This would allow me to get information efficiently and would also make it much easier for Anthony (shout out to you and thanks for your help) to be able to try and manage the entire east coast CPO program (as he's pretty much alone doing this)!

 

[CpoHunter]

Agree with everything you said, but they've known forever that the customer gets literally no information and yet they still sell tons of CPOs every month. Nothing will change until they run out of fanboys willing to buy sight unseen, and there seems to be no shortage of those.

 

[Nick B]

I have to agree with you CpoHunter... but what tesla is not realizing is that it is burning some of it's most loyal customers simply because of a lack of common sense.

 

[PhilDavid]

Agree with everything you said, but they've known forever that the customer gets literally no information and yet they still sell tons of CPOs every month. Nothing will change until they run out of fanboys willing to buy sight unseen, and there seems to be no shortage of those.

I don't think it's even a matter of fanboys... We are all fanboys here to to some extent but, even considering Tesla fanboys, I don't know how many fanboys have waited this long to buy a Tesla that is all damaged and beaten up. We've read plenty of stories from people who have had to reject cars in disgust due to the poor condition of the cars.

I have a feeling at some point they will run out of suckers willing to buy damaged cars at these prices. It's a shame the harm caused to their reputation in the meantime due to lost trust and customer goodwill.

 

[Raechris]

Stealerships make more money on CPO and used cars then new

 

[PhilDavid]

Stealerships make more money on CPO and used cars then new

Based on your logic, Tesla should also be able to make a decent profit selling used cars in decent condition just like dealers.

The issue here is they are offering a far worse experience than "stealerships."

 

[roblab]

Yeah why treat customers well and sell a quality product if you can mistreat them instead? Seems to be the motto of the CPO program.

Haha. It couldn't be that they're understaffed and overworked. Maybe you ought to offer your time to work their phones (some of those phone staffers actually do this) so you could show them how to do it.